The Things They Carried
>2006-04-29 - 9:25 p.m.
I just finished reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.
The stories inside are stories of the lives of real men, real people who went through war and suffered and died. And yet I'm making use of their stories to try to get my A at my A levels? It's like saying, oh yes, thank you O'Brien, for this quote. It shows so well how terrible war is. Oh lookie, this part shows psychological trauma, this part talks about bravery. Thank you for going through that suffering and writing about it so I could get my A for literature. It doesn't feel too right. Yet I can't deny that reading it interests me, and it makes me want to know more and more. And I smile and am grateful for the fact that I am taking literature.
Sometimes the stories just make you feel like yelling and screaming at the faces of people who sent them to the war, to go back in time and do something and change what happened. And just imagine, this is just one of the many books on war - there are still millions out there, with even more horrific stories to tell, even more heart-wrenching memories written.
Sometimes I laughed at his words. Sometimes I felt like hitting O'Brien for his use of ironies and oxymorons, they were biting and painful. I look at the sides of the pages, you know, the corners where you flip? And I marvel at how plain looking they are, how simple and deceptive of the power they hold. It's like a treasure that lies inside. Though I think many people would think me crazy at this point. Overly sentimental, perhaps.
Was the Vietnam war really necessary?